Old-line Connecticut Democrats who backed insurgent candidate Ned Lamont against Sen. Joseph Lieberman were appalled to see their candidate flanked at his Tuesday night primary election celebration in Meriden, Conn., by two contentious African-American political activists from out of state.

One second we are talking about the Lieberman primary loss in Connecticut and the very next, the all-but-carried-out plan by al-Qaida to blow up multiple passenger jets over the Atlantic Ocean. What is the lesson in such a drastic change of subject from the innocuous to the terrifying?

Fri, Aug 11, 2006

If Jews are the canaries in the coalmine of how a civilization, state, or country will treat religious or ethnic minorities, what is Israel — the only democratic state in the Middle East, and the only Jewish state in the world? For several years now, I have been asking the question: Will our culture and the international community allow us to fight the war we need to fight to prevail? An interim answer to that question is now playing out for Israel, our international canary in the darkest of mines.

British police and MI-5 "thwarted" [a word which has not been used in conversation for the past 150 years until today] a plot to blow up between six and ten US airliners while they were crossing the Atlantic Ocean from Heathrow to JFK or Dulles or LAX.

There was hype in the air as it became clear that Sen. Joe Lieberman’s fortunes were turning southward in his primary battle against millionaire vanity candidate — and now Democratic nominee — Ned Lamont.

Often we hear that "all the experts agree" that A is better than B or that "studies prove" A to be better than B. But one of the reasons for this can be that only people who favor A over B are likely to get the money to conduct studies or be given access to the data needed for a study.

On Wednesday, Aug. 9, when Israel finally launched a major ground operation into Lebanon aimed at crushing Hezbollah terrorists, there was a collective gasp from the striped-pants set at U.N. Headquarters in New York.

The state Senate already has voted 25 to 14 to create a special exemption in state law that would reduce the mandatory 30-day impoundment of cars driven by unlicensed drivers, so that offenders who have never had a valid license can get their cars back after 24 hours.

With the defeat of Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary in Connecticut, anti-war forces are poised for a takeover of the Democratic Party. Tuesday's exhilarating victory, and the elan and electoral legitimacy gained, may carry the newly energized Democratic left to considerable success in November.

McKinney lost handily. Beyond that, her final hours before eventually conceding defeat made for the most underreported and bizarre story of a political exit I've ever seen in my years of participating in or analyzing political races around the country.

“We’d love to have her go,” United Service Organizations spokesman John Hanson tells The Beltway Beat, referring to 20-year-old actress Lindsay Lohan, who says she wants to go to Iraq to entertain U.S. troops in the mold of Marilyn Monroe a half-century ago.

My late mentor, Nobel Prize-winning economist George Stigler, used to say that it could be very instructive to spend a few hours in a library checking up on studies that had been cited. When I began doing that, I found it not only instructive but disillusioning.

The narrow primary defeat of veteran senator Joe Lieberman in Connecticut's Democratic primary is more than a loss for one man. It is a loss for his party and for the country. It completes the capture of the Democratic Party by its Taliban wing.

The movie is about real life, an event not quite five years old. It's a contemporary docudrama based on what happened to two Port Authority cops (played by Nicholas Cage and Michael Pena) trapped under debris at Ground Zero, who can't move in the stone and steel trappings that lock their bodies under the earth in an inferno.

Hillary Clinton's confrontation with Donald Rumsfeld at the Senate Armed Services Committee last week lasted only 12 minutes but offered a glimpse of the 2008 Democratic presidential front-runner's style. A tense Sen. Clinton seemed mechanical, reading a five-minute indictment of the secretary of defense. His six and one-half minute impromptu response was far more animated.

I had such high hope for the 109th Congress. A Republican President had been re-elected with an outright majority of the popular vote. Republicans increased their margins by four in each body of the Congress. Yet unless there are some spectacular moves in that final month the 109th Congress will go down in history as one of the least productive.

"Joe, why are you doing this?" That is a question Joe Lieberman will hear again and again from old friends, as he mounts his "independent" campaign for the Senate seat his own party voted on Tuesday to take away from him.

"What's the big deal over a little faked smoke?" That seems to be the prevailing attitude among media pooh-bahs irked by bloggers who exposed the crude Photoshoppery of a Reuters photographer over the weekend.

There are decent people, without a selfish hidden agenda, who support increases in minimum wages as a means to help low-skilled workers, and there are other decent people, with the identical goal, who strongly oppose increases in the minimum wage.

David Brooks devoted his entire Sunday New York Times column to a truncated verbatim text of an interview he had on background with a Bush Administration "policy maker" on our Middle East foreign policy.

As I travel the country speaking to civic, religious and education organizations about how to protect today’s youth in a culture gone crazy, it’s obvious that the problem isn’t parental worry -- it’s parental ignorance and inaction.

While liberals are licking their chops in anticipation of the demise of conservatism, Democrats are proving they are incapable of capitalizing on any electoral difficulties Republicans might encounter in November.

Even though public schools stopped teaching geography a couple of decades ago, most Americans (especially residents of the Show Me State) are surprised to learn that Kansas City (where the only waves are "amber waves of grain") is a port. We are also surprised, and shocked, to discover that Mexico will be running its own inspection facility there.

An elderly woman in my community learned not too long ago that she needed dentures. She had enough money to pay for the new teeth, but she discovered that her funds, while technically hers, couldn't be touched.

In 1972 I was introduced to a young man from Indiana who had been brought to Washington to become Executive Director of the American Conservative Union (ACU). I found Larry Pratt to be a man of character and principle, and one with whom it was easy to work. We got along very well. Indeed many people confused him with me and vice versa.

Grass-roots Americans of all parties and economic classes rose up out of their political apathy a few months ago and forced President George W. Bush to reverse his administration's decision to allow a Middle East government to own America's major ports.

Pat Buchanan, not satisfied merely looking like a Herblock depiction of a bigot, a man who never allows an opportunity to slam Israel slip through his fingers, has been on a rampage because Israel has finally gone after the murderous thugs and sadists of Hezbollah.

You don't have to be told these are sad times for political commentary. H.L. Mencken and Murray Kempton, who are still worth reading after all these years, are not only gone but as forgotten as the Cold War. Michael Kelly was killed in Iraq. And there'll never be another George Orwell, despite all the pretenders to the title.

Remember when the city of Berkeley, Calif., declared itself a "nuclear-free zone" Cynics snickered, but the plain fact is that no nuclear weapon has gone off in the city since that day. So the policy seems to be working.

The other day, I was looking for a Merle Haggard CD in the local Wal-Mart. I didn’t find the CD, but I did witness a scene that speaks volumes about how Israel should handle the threat of Hezbollah in the Middle East.

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